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nitus:

I'm astounded by the lack of outrage down in wannabe-america AKA southern ontario.

We got Dion, a man who was appointed directly to cabinet without being elected and then pushed through a can't lose liberal riding, whose sole claim to fame is as a career yes-man. We got Rae, a man who southern ontario should hate more than anyone else. We got Broadbent and Cretien, two men who don't hold office (one dragged Canada through a period of corruption and mismanagement that resulted ultimately in the near death of his party). And we got the Bloc.

Their sole motivation seems to have been an understandable desire to keep their parties on the public tit, although one of them is dedicated to chopping it off.

And they want to bring down the Conservatives, who voters gave a stunning victory (short of a majority only because of the red dot on the map that is Toronto), osentibly because Harper is going to ruin Canada's economy by refusing to line the pockets of a few American corporations?

For Canadians, the Conservatives have been wrong on almost every issue that has defined what Canadians believe in. On the questions of universal healthcare, and small "l" liberal community standards, the Tories have been swimming upstream. As a result they've spent 90% of so of the last century on the outside looking in. Those of us "of a certain age" remember the vicious lying fight they put up against universal health care.

Harper has "won" two minority governments. Despite an historic Liberal collapse in Quebec he was unable to win a majority. Why? Because Canadians are not ready to hand over our "social network" to the "tender care" of the Religious Right and the Reaganite "Trickle Down, Deregulate, Government is the enemy" crowd.

As in the USA, the "right" doesn't want government "leaner" it wants Government "gone." The US shows us the end game of that philosophy. Canadians know better.

Polls always show a majority of Canadians as being "center/left." Harper's hatred and disrespect of the opposition may have now created the "New Liberal Democratic Party" of Canada.

Thank you Mr. Harper, your disrespect is going to give Canadians the opportunity to elect, "Change we can believe in!"

Did the Conservativess of yore not argue that socialised medicine would be insanely expensive and provide poor quality of care? Regardless of how much of our identity as Canadians is tied up in socialised medicine, I'd argue that history is making them look pretty good on that front.

Also, in what universe has the post-World War II American right reduced or eliminated government intervention as opposed to massively increasing both spending and interference?

Anyway, the good news for us all is that the junta has promised to implement Kyoto, bail out Ontario factories, and raise corporate taxes during a recession! Shall we start rolling the trucks up to Edmonton, Calgary, and Regina now, or should we wait until the government's installed before shipping more of our hard-earned dough to line Eastern pockets?

I remain confused why conservatives are called the "government is the enemy crowd" when all we've been hearing for 5 straight years was how evil George W. is.

Just an hour ago in Safeway I was behind two racial minorities and a homosexual staffer who were discussing the current political news: they got basically every piece of information wrong but then expressed how horrible its been to have Harper in charge and how horrible it is that Stelmach is still in charge and how dumb those rednecks are. Aren't they part of the "government is the enemy" crowd? They certainly feel like they are enemies of the Alberta and Canadian governments this evening (and they will all be shocked to learn tomorrow that Harper is still PM, given that the one who was a Safeway staffer explained to his friends how Harper was "removed from office" today).

Canadians have been spoon-fed centre-left propaganda for decades. The starting point is in the school system, where teachers tend to be proponents of social democratic theories. (Not trying to allege some paranoid evil indoctrination scheme, of course - it's just the net effect...) The truth is that most Canadians hold relatively conservative political views - they believe in hard work, law and order, and generally don't like change all that much. The problem is the cognitive dissonance between what makes sense in the real world and the social theories they were taught in school. Recall how upset people got when Pluto was demoted from a planet to a minor planet several years ago? There wasn't really any reason to get upset, but they were upset because they'd been taught Pluto was a planet in grade school. Now think about what happens when people have to confront the fact that the cultural mosaic has many of the characteristics of a mosaic - a brittle composition of many disparate elements; or that perhaps Pearson's theory of peacekeeping was really an abject failure in practice. Canada has generations raised to believe in the Liberal party's vision of Canada, and it's pretty hard to shake people out of their rut.